The Fratelli Empire

Long Live the Emperor

"I left my bottomless keg behind!"

After putting the Lady of Spices back together, the party was given one more task – retrieve the contents of a vault. In fact, the vault that Shrike’s former family had collected many magical artifacts. In exchange, the Lady would offer Shrike, a warforged warden, her protection from his true creator – the Lord of Blades, who is looking to kill the warden.

The rest of the party – Stack (warforged slayer), Gidget (halfling artificer/shaman), Mr. Pokey (thri-kreen ranger), and Kai-Garel (genasi wizard) set off with Shrike to start bringing the artifacts to the Lady and to meet with an eladrin that she had sent ahead.

Arriving at the vault, the door unsealed when Shrike approached, but he immediately deactivated, which is when Starspiral of Andralon (eladrin swordmage) arrived, barraging the newly arrived party with questions and demands.

While sorting out that they were the group that the Lady was sending to meet him, only Gidget noticed when Kai ventured into the vault, heading straight for a large golden seal with a dragon head engraved upon it. As soon as he picked it up, the vault disappeared for everyone except Shrike.

After spending some time in a void, the group was not-so-lightly deposited in a castle courtyard. High above the great doors presumably leading into the ruined castle’s main hall, was the same symbol as on the now coin-sized seal that Kai held.

Not sure where they were, or why, Stack suggested that maybe touching the engraved stone seal of the castle might teleport them back home. Gidget’s gnomeflinger and ring to prevent injury from a fall made it easy to try.

As the move failed to teleport the group anywhere, the party’s attention was turned to the castle’s gates. “HALT!” the leader of a group of soldiers and war turtles yelled at the newcomers.

After some back and forth (and threat to execute the scholar of the party), Kai unleashed an attack on the soldiers, chilling them to the bone. The rest of the party joined in on the attack – knocking two of the soldiers unconscious, and easily dispatching the rest.

Knowing the soldiers would be unconscious for about an hour, the party tied up the two. As they tried to learn as much as possible about their prisoners, another group, much larger than the first, arrived. This group was much more ragtag, not at clearly organized.

This group was not nearly as aggressive, revealing that the soldiers were under the command of The Emperor. This group was part of a rebellion against the emperor and would help the party find a way home, if they would help kill all the soldiers in an outpost.

The party agreed, after determining that the group’s leader, called “Gemini”, was not lying and provided them a map to the outpost. Gemini took the prisoners for “questioning” and headed off.

The party followed the map, resting for the night once, then made their way to the outpost, seeing that there were soldiers milling about, not being very diligent in their posts. What will they see when they get inside?